


Tales From Stardate 2246

by Kdin



Series: Children of Distant Worlds [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Baggage, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Soul Bond, Starfleet Academy, T'hy'la, Tarsus IV, Teen Angst, Vulcan, Young Love, Your usual Tarsus warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 14:59:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kdin/pseuds/Kdin
Summary: First came famine. The painful path of growing up through one too many space flights. And eventually arriving home.





	Tales From Stardate 2246

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as The Epilogue.
> 
> After months and months of deliberation about where I wanted to head this story to reach a (well-deserved) happy ending for these two, I have decided to deliver the events of Tarsus and link Jim and Spock's stories through the cold hands of angst. 
> 
> This was intentionally published as a work in progress so you guys can help me out. As always, suggestions are open, and will be treasured by yours truly. So, comment away. I will write your ideas as the plot suits them. Let's team work!

_Winona_ Kirk was known for being a relentless person. She used people like tools for the benefit of her crew, her captain and her ship. She was the best Commander Officer Captain Bordeaux could ever dream of. No detail would slip from her fingers and by her side, the Captain felt safe.

Yes, Winona was known for being capable of anything. However, that did not include being able to save her children.

Sam, her firstborn, ran away from home. When Winona found out about this she had crumpled to the ground in tears and used her anguish to send people to look for him. But Sam was a Kirk and Kirks are good at many things. Hiding, turned out to be one of them.

A few hours later, with salt and Sam’s name still in her lips, Winona found out about the Romulan incident. When she heard her little one’s name when the Terran hostage was identified, her heart shattered, and her vision went blurry. _Jimmy,_ her brain chanted. Over and over.

As she turned it over in her mind days later, with Jim’s custody taken by Human Services and Sam still missing, Winona felt like she hadn’t done enough. She failed to understand how she allowed any of this to happen.

“It was James’ ballet instructor that called for us,” Pike explained over a video transmission. “Mrs. Katja noticed hematomas on James’ arms and face.”

Winona couldn’t stand to look at him. She shook her head. “That fucker…” she muttered to herself.

“He’s facing charges now, hence the reason of my call, Commander Kirk.”

“Is _he_ okay?” Winona burst. “Did they hurt my baby?”

“They stunned him with a phaser, Commander,” Pike said, his expression clear of emotion. “He was attended in the USS Merced’s medbay. They used tissue regenerators on your son, after that he was declared on optimal health.”

Now, his children were gone. And she could send a hundred Starfleet cadets to look for Sam, or to care for Jimmy but it was all futile. Her ship needed her. Winona asked Pike, made him look after Jimmy, for as long as he could. She wanted him to make sure that he could make a home of whatever drafted Earth colony, whatever planet they would take him to. She trusted in his boy, friendly, kind, smart and energetic. Besides, she could call him at the end of the day and check up on him. So he wouldn’t think she didn’t care. She wanted to show him she wanted to be there, wanted him to understand that being an adult wasn't so easy.

Jim was still on medbay when he rejected her call.

*****

Tarsus IV was like the barn in Iowa.

One of the first things Jim did the day he arrived, besides writing a mail to Vulcan and changing his shoes, was run in the fields.

The Sol burnt his skin and hurt his eyes, but he loved to be left without breath almost as much as he loved to explore. As the hours passed, Jim kept walking until he found a small creek. There, he sat, taking off his shoes and socks to dip his legs on the warm water. He sank his hands on the orange colored soil. At that moment, as it started to get dark and the wind revolved around him playfully, Jim wished Spock was there with him. They would have a whole new planet to explore. A whole planet for themselves.

******

Sam had been right.

Not by leaving Jim, no. That had been an act that still left Jim aching inside. An act that Sam himself regretted vastly years later.

No. But Jim remembered when Sam said he’d had better things in Tarsus. At least, that had been the initial intention. Being away from Frank had been a good start.

Pike had traveled along with Jim to the Tarsus star system, he needed to be sure that Jim was adjusted before leaving. After exiting the shuttle, Pike guided Jim to his new home, the only boarding school in the Colony.

They welcomed Jim with a stack of text books and classic novels, a pencil case with a fifteen cm ruler, and a tag with his full name, _James Tiberius Kirk,_ laminated and drawn with a delicate cursive letter.

They assigned him an old bunk and two roommates, Kevin and Thomas. Good kids both. Where Kevin was soft and emotional, Thomas was callous and unruffled. In some way, they reminded Jim of Spock, two sides of him whole. And they accepted Jim with open arms. They toured him around the facilities, they told him the scary urban legends of the Colony, they accepted Jim’s help when it was time to do their homework, they shared their dental floss, and they helped Jim get a baseball cap to cover his face with when the Tarsus Sol burned too unforgiving.

Needless to say. The boys had each other’s backs.

A year passed. Jim did not know about his mother, or Sam. The prospect of calling his mother was frightening and Sam would still be missing. Nevertheles, every night, a little before lights-out, Jim rushed to the library’s computers, where he logged in securely to read Spock’s past mail and send him a response.

These messages where filled with many topics and discussions. Usually, Spock and Jim shared their daily activities with each other. Their classes, their interactions and their newly achieved knowledge. Spock told Jim about his pet, a sehlat named I-Chaya, which sounded like a Terran bear to Jim, only scarier. They talked about their hopes for the future days, about how they’d meet again someday.

It became _imperious_ for Jim to escape his dormitory to write a new mail, or else he felt his day had been incomplete.

*****

Sam had promised good classes for Jim, too.

As it turned out, the Colony’s Governor was Principal and taught two of Jim’s classes at the boarding school.

Now, Jim always piqued the adults’ attention. For instance, his ballet instructor usually remarked on the execution of his movements. He was graceful, he had a good line. His math teacher kind of loathed Jim. Finishing his work in five minutes tops and disrupting his class for the remaining fifty-five minutes.

If Jim wasn’t much disciplined didn’t matter. Jim was privileged.

It wasn’t long before Kodos – Governor Kodos, Principal Kodos, Professor Kodos – realized this.

A good day, Kodos initiated his class not as the ethics professor, but as Principal. He provided every student in the class with copies of an intelligence/aptitude test with almost three hundred items. While it is mandatory to explain the persons who will submit their answers the purpose of said evaluation, Principal Kodos did not do this.

Moreover, the purpose for evaluation must be justified, must be ethical.

The children assumed that they were being graded with a note.

And in some twisted way, this was true. 

*****

Kodos’ suspicions had been correct, Jim excelled in more than one aspect. It was a habit of this atrocious person to seek for greatness, as he thought he was great himself.

He started tutoring Jim after class, sometimes sending him to dinner very late, when there was no one left in the cafeteria. This classes were too advanced for a twelve year old. Symbolic logic, critical thinking, select topics in philosophy, statistics and economics. Jim loved to learn, loved to face a challenge. In a way, he loved to hear that he _had it in him_. Loved to encounter a person who didn’t belittle him for his age.

But Jim hated being a shadow.

“Aren’t you a carbon copy of George Kirk, the notorious hero,” Kodos told him once, when Jim delivered a paper discussing Jung’s twelve archetypes.

At his words, Jim felt his anger boiling beneath his skin like acid.

_The hero. Where there's a will, there's a way._

It was a slap in the face. The way Kodos mocked Jim and mocked his father simultaneously with expertise. Mocked them behind a mask of praise.

*****

It pained Jim that he didn’t find out about the danger they were about to face in time. That way, he could have told Spock about it and maybe none of the horrors would have taken place.

*****

Governor Kodos started consuming Jim’s evenings.

He traded what was (is, will always be) _invaluable_ , for protection against the upcoming storm.

At this point, Jim, and every other common colonist ignored the issue with the exotic fungus poisoning Tarsus IV’s supplies. Kodos had sent waves of distress to the Federation but had received nothing but radio silence in response.

“A storm is coming, James,” he said, and then switched topics abruptly. “You must know, but it is worth mentioning that your intelligence is above average.”

Jim’s eyes, like broken diamonds, followed Kodos as he paced in his office.

“Unlike your friends, James, you are truly worthy.”

Jim did not understand these words but he didn’t dare to ask, not after Kodos had become a monster like a tower. Not a politician, not a teacher, not a governor but a ruler, a dictator. Later Jim would understand them, though. Kodos had meant worthy of living.

*****

Kevin was the first to notice.

He’d curl up on Jim’s bunk at night. He’d try to tickle him or tell him some stupid joke. But Jim’s laugh was ephemeral.

“What’s wrong, JT?”

Jim’s eyes came back to focus. “Nothing, Kev.”

*****

The last message Jim sent to Spock read something like this:

_Hey, Spock._

_I’m in a hurry right now (they’re about to call lights out) but I really wanted to write to you._

_Have you heard of archetypes? I’m sure you have._

_I made my own research not long ago and this idea has been turning around in my mind ever since. Kodos said something about my father being a hero and me being “a carbon copy of him”. Spock, I do not know if I am imagining it but I think he made fun of him. He didn’t say it, but if my father was a hero he would’ve lived. If he was a hero he wouldn’t have left me behind._

_What do you think?_

_What I do know is that I’m angry. And scared, Spock._

_If I’m the hero, then he’s the ruler._ Power isn't everything, it's the only thing. _I might be arrogance but I’m not overpower. Heroes earn their crowns._ _I think it’s better to want to improve the universe instead of wanting control. above. everything._

*****

It was economics. If you broke it down to letters, to logic. It was only a matter of _economics_ when Kodos called for Jim, Kevin and Thomas before ordering the officers to open fire, right there at the school.

The food had begun to become scarce. The servings had become smaller and smaller each new day. Before the massacre began, _hours_ before, Governor Kodos had spoken to his colonists, laying out the situation like a person dissecting a dead animal. Clinically dictating a cause of death. Kodos tried to convince himself that he had waited for the Federation. But he put out the lives of the colonists like a math assignment and added his perverse understanding of eugenics and ordered to have half the population murdered before all the supplies ran out and the crops died.

Kodos had decided to save other children. They were waiting in a line at his office while one of the officials marked two horizontal lines on their wrists.

This is how Kodos took care of his protégés. Sending them off to a soon-to-be civil war.

*****

The children hid inside a warehouse. It was just the three of them, Kevin, Tom and Jim, the others ran off somewhere safe, they hoped.  

“There has got to be a way,” Jim snarled.

“Jim, the waves have been sent,” Kevin replied, digging his dirty fingers around Jim’s wrist. “The Federation’s supplies will come, we’ll be okay.”

“We just have to survive through this.”

“I know Spock can send help faster!” Jim argued, freeing himself of his friend’s grip. He clasped the door handle with both hands and opened it. “If we don’t find a way to send him a distress call then we’ll be dead.”

“No, JT!” Tom shouted. “Going outside means we’re dead!” Tom shoved Jim back inside the room. Jim’s vision swam and he fell to his knees, stayed there while Tom locked them in again.

Kevin had gotten good at not crying since Jim met him. Instead, he would curl against a wall, hugging his knees to his chest or blocking his ears with his arms. Jim knew this is how Kevin cried now. “The officers can’t harm us, right?” Kevin’s voice broke and he sounded like he was four years old. With the dirt on his face and his hollowed cheeks that accentuated his eyes he did look much younger than he was. “Governor Kodos gave us the tattoos for that reason?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Tom said, a slight bite in his words. “The officers have a job and that is to kill anything that moves, they won’t stop to check our wrists to see if we were selected to live.”

“I’m scared,” Kevin mouthed and at that single moment something changed in Jim.

They agreed to be quiet as the night advanced. Tom, the oldest, guarded the door. His ear was pressed against the metal, so he could hear if anyone approached. Jim kept his arms wrapped around Kevin, he stroked his brown locks non-stop. It seemed to calm him.

Jim could see flaring lights outside. Officers with flashing lights looking for people hiding on the fields. Each carried a counter and soft click sounds could be heard with every dead body they walked on  Kevin whimpered when he saw them and Jim tightened his grip around him. The three boys looked at each other, as if their scared faces and startled eyes would be the last thing the saw before they died. Jim pressed a finger on Kevin’s bottom lip.

_Quiet._

They did not move, did not breathe until the officers went in another direction.

On that violent night, silence reigned in the room just for an instant. Jim would later find out how that precise night was named, when Tarsus IV became a part of the history books and academic texts. _The execution night._ An older Jim, wise, insightful, would read these texts. Read the numbers, the testimonies. Around four thousand colonists lost their lives by the orders of a man-playing-god. Even if Jim, at age twelve, would have known what was happening outside, he would still exit the warehouse to assist the cries he heard on the fields.

“Don’t! JT, are you insane?” Tom said in a silent shout. “What if it’s bait? They’ll kill you!”

“It’s not! There are kids outside and we need to bring them with us!”

“Fuck,” Tom hissed. “You go do that,” Tom unplastered himself from the door and hugged Kevin. “I’ll take care of him.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Four dark-haired children roamed aimlessly. The oldest one, Zari, had hot splatters of blood on her face, and on her arms a crying baby, Birdie, wearing braids and green clothes. The twins, Jaden and Cee Cee, hovering around her older sister, little fists around the hem of her dress, cheeks ridden with tears.

Suddenly, it was not silence that reigned outside the warehouse, but fire.

Gunshots. Screams. Creaking wood. Burning leaves.

Jim wasted no time in guiding them inside the warehouse and locking the metallic door of that small room with them inside.

“Officers came to our home,” Zari said letting Jim wipe the blood at her face with his jacket. He was relieved to see that the blood wasn’t hers. “They asked my parents for their last name… Said they weren’t on the list… They…” Her voice broke and the sobs didn’t allow her to finish.

Everyone understood.

Kevin clung to her and Jim took Birdie in his arms.

*****

The smoke of the civil war did not dissipate for five days.

It was thick and achy and one of them would fall into a fit of coughing because of it.

Even then, the children did not leave that warehouse, couldn’t risk it.

Tom guarded the door and Jim stared out the window, although he wouldn’t let anyone see through it. Wouldn’t let them see the survivors looking for corpses and dragging them.

Jim knew they didn’t want them for burial.

Perhaps, the hardest part of being locked in that warehouse (starving, scared, alone, hopeless, dying) was looking at the food supply that had been stored there, obviously exposed to the toxic fungus.

Staring at food in a state of hunger and not being able to eat was a crime.

It was hard to convince themselves not to eat those poisoned supplies, if death was going to come either way.

All of them learned that hunger was a monster.

When Jim went out of the warehouse on the fourth day, Tom wanted to stop him.

Jim’s knees were weak. They wanted to give in, but Jim could only think of the hero archetype. _Where there’s a will, there’s a way_ , he thought, over and over. It was not enough.

Instead he pictured their faces. He couldn’t stand to see them starving anymore.

Jim couldn’t allow to sit there and do nothing. So he went straight into the mouth of the wolf.

*****

It was simple economics.

Jim brought food back into the warehouse. Birdie stopped crying and that’s how Jim knew it had worked out.

But it was not only Jim who had a strong will.

Zari was most definitely a warrior, Tom learned to be unafraid and Kevin to be fearless. Surviving meant risking everything for a few crumbs. Defending themselves meant they had to kill an officer once. Rummaging around what was left of the Colony became inevitable, for the food that Jim retrieved from Kodos was a one person portion. The rations they had for themselves became smaller when Zari and Tom found two little girls, ages seven and ten, her names were Cygnus and Aldair.

If you asked anyone familiar with Tarsus, ten years later, they’d refer to them as either the _Tarsus Nine_ or the _Children of the Rebellion._ After so long of managing to survive on their own and running away from danger, it was one night that an officer held Kevin at gunpoint, threatening with killing him if he didn’t show them where the others were.  The _Tarsus Nine_ became the original nine eyewitnesses of Kodos the Executioner when they were imprisoned and brought to him.  

Kodos ordered their officers to take the youngest away, Birdie, Jaden, Cee Cee and Cygnus. Jim wasted no time to step forward, asking Kodos to leave them alone and take him instead. He threw himself at Kodos’ feet and looked at him through his tears.

He begged and screamed himself hoarse. He sobbed and felt himself dying. His vision blurring and his head spinning.

“Do not martyrize yourself, James,” said Kodos.  

Jim didn’t not stop, never stopped. He implored again, the bones of his knees digging sorely on the cement.

“Do not harm them, please− Let them go, take me instead, please, sir,” he moaned.

With a nod of his head, Kodos had Zari assassinated. A blow. Screaming. Silence.

*****

Help arrived late, painfully late. The first thing they noticed was that the capitol building was drowning in flames, so the first squadron was sent there for assistance. Soon, −yet so late− five Federation battle cruisers were hovering over Tarsus IV.

Christopher Pike retired indefinably from his duties as Captain after his first five-year mission. For him, it had been like a hard strike to the morale. He had seen things in away missions that made him question the Federation itself. This time, Pike was under Captain Robert April’s directions onboard of the USS Enterprise. He had been beamed down as part of an away team and as they took in the horrors of Tarsus IV around them, Pike thought, _this is exactly why the Federation’s motives are open to question._

It was a bunch of inexperienced Starfleet officers that found the children tied up on the platform in the city square.

Over the comm, a heaving voice called for help− “Four children, around the age of twelve. One of them has a third degree burn on his face, another has deep lacerations on his skull. Low BP− Ready to beam up!”

*****

 _Kodos the Executioner found dead_ , the Federation declared publicly.

When he came to himself, Jim screamed. Screamed his lungs out, exhaustion did not stop him, the drugs did.

Everything Jim did was cry and yell unintelligibly. Names, pleads. When he was aware he only asked to see the pictures of Kodos’ dead body.

Christopher Pike refused the first ten, twenty times. But that was all Jim wanted (or else he lashed out, needed two persons to hold him back before he hurt himself) and Pike couldn’t allow the nurses to keep Jim drugged out of consciousness.

Jim believed it when Pike took out his PADD and placed it on his lap. The picture showed a pile of flesh. Burnt flesh and ashes.

After that Jim went silent.

*****

“Where are they…?” Jim muttered.

He had been lying on the bio bed for three hours now, eyes closed, immobile. Pike thought he was asleep.

“Kevin and Thomas are here,” Pike said. “They’re alright.”

“The children…”

“Officers found a two year old, twins and a baby. Were they with you, James?”

Jim nodded with a pained expression ruling his ashen face.

“They’re on board of the Republic, they are unharmed.”

That was not it. They had lost Zari. Images of her broken eyes haunted Jim every time it was dark. Cygnus had called her _mommy_ , the only word she knew.

“Aldair...” Jim groaned, thinking _why them, why, why why_

Pike pursed his lips into a thin line. He searched for Jim’s hand to hold before shaking his head.

“I’m so sorry.”

*****

After that, Jim did not speak to anyone. Only Tom and Kevin.

One time, Pike sent the children to sleep. Tom sighed, Kevin nodded and Jim didn’t even look at him. They spent that night huddled on one bio bed. Kevin still flinched when he looked at the badly healed burns on Tom’s face, so he leaned on Jim and petted his blond hair and caressed his wounds over the bandages around his head.

“I’m going to be like them one day,” said Kevin merrily. “I’m gonna go to away missions and I’ll save people.”

Tom shook his head and looked away but otherwise didn’t comment on it.

Jim thought of Spock then. Their small but meaningful promise to meet again at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. Sometimes, Jim would send articles on warp theory and stellar cartography and Spock would respond with an eloquent and delightful discussion of the subject. How much had Jim enjoyed those endless talks. Every night he went to bed with Spock’s words in his head, swirling around his memory. When he laid his head on the pillow he could only imagine what it would be like, to study what he held dearest next to his best friend.

“JT? You want to go to Starfleet, too. We going to be classmates, right?” asked Kevin.

Jim hesitated.

He did not desire to be a part of an away team. He did not want to attend a distress call not a minute too late. He did not want to see the destruction of civilizations so closely anymore.

Right now, the idea of fulfilling his promise was terrifying.

*****

Seeing Winona’s face, his mom’s face on the holoscreen after Tarsus was something Jim could never shake off his bones. The last time he had seen her it had been on Earth, before she left them behind with an abuser. Before it all went to shit. She struggled to stay calm, but her voice was broken and that _couldn’t be_ Winona Kirk speaking.

She apologized, she promised everything would be alright. She said they’d be home soon, that she’d be home for real this time.

*****

It was a painful task to say goodbye to Thomas and Kevin.

Tom hugged Jim longer than ever and Kevin cried and sniffled against Jim’s shirt. It was Kevin’s idea to send messages, so they would stay in touch. Jim and Tom agreed, nonetheless, they both knew they would not answer Kevin if it meant going back, remembering Tarsus. The older boys knew that their separation meant starting over and leaving the ashes behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter will focus on Spock and his journey into adjusting to his alien-ated-home planet.
> 
> Write your suggestions down below, I'm all ears!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
